


Not Myself You See

by sistabro



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abduction, Adultery, Alternate Universe, Angels are Dicks, Childbirth, F/M, Het, Infidelity, Masturbation, Memory Alteration, Mindfuck, Missionary Position, Oral Sex, Pregnancy, Season/Series 06, Time Travel, midwife!Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2012-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-19 17:07:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistabro/pseuds/sistabro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He calls you Jess and has a picture of the two of you together in his pocket. Only your name is Alice and you've never seen him before in your life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Myself You See

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Shadow [image]](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/13951) by crimsontoad. 



> Written for the 2012 [spn-reversebang](http://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com) challenge for crimsontoad's amazing [prompt](http://spnreversemod.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/1352/83843). Make sure to check out the [art master list](http://crimsontoad.livejournal.com/902.html) and leave some love! Also, so much love and thanks to moragmacpherson and callowyn for last minute betaing above and beyond the call of duty. All remaining mistakes are my own.

> I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> 'I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir,' said Alice, 'Because I'm not myself you see.'
> 
>  
> 
> ― Lewis Carroll, _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass_

 

_July 11, 2011_

When Karen finally walks in after her knocks go unanswered, she finds you pacing up and down the living room, Elijah wailing in your arms and you crying right along with him.

"Oh, Alice, honey. Here give him to me." She sets the stack of pamphlets she was dropping off for Sunday's service on the coffee table and plucks the baby out of your hands.

You promptly sit down--it feels like you've been walking for miles--and you try to scrub the evidence of your maternal breakdown from your face.

"Still collicky, is he?" Karen asks, swaying from side to side.

"God help me, yes." You think you might start crying again. "Three days now, and I never thought I say this, but Perry can't get home soon enough. He's got the magic touch whenever Elijah gets sick like this."

"Where is he anyways? We missed him at yesterday's Bible study."

"Some emergency minister's conference, I think?" You lean back into the couch with a sigh. "He rushed out without a whole lot of explaining, but he called and said he'd be home for dinner tonight."

"Thank the Lord Jesus for that," Karen says. "Thomas tries his best, but no one preaches the Word like your husband. We're lucky to have him."

"Lucky," you say, feeling anything but. He may preach Hellfire like no one else, but their marriage is a cold and lonely thing.

"You're in no fit state to welcome him like this though," Karen says after a moment, and it's just like her to try to make you presentable and proper. "Why don't we trade for the afternoon?"

"Trade?"

"I'll take Elijah and you go keep my spa appointment. Get your hair and nails done and give yourself a little me time. No offense, but you look like you need it."

You laugh, because it's the truth. "Are you sure?" you ask, because that's what you do, but you are already getting to your aching feet. This house is a prison and the chance to break out, just for a little while, is too rare to pass up. You stand up and hug her before she can take it back, then snag your purse from the end table.

"I'm sure, Alice." She starts herding you to the door. "You go on now and have a good time, I'll call and let them know you're coming. Elijah and I will be just fine." 

You grab your keys and lean in to give Karen a quick hug and drop a kiss on your baby's head. "Thank you, Karen. Really, thank you." 

"Oh, hush, it ain't nothing. Now shoo." She follows you to the door, lifts Elijah's little hand and and together they wave goodbye.

++

"Jess?"

He's stopped in front of your table, a man tall enough to loom over even you standing up, and there's no mistaking he's talking to you. Your palms start to sweat and you lift your book higher, covering your face, and hopes he takes the hint before he can ruin what has so far been a glorious afternoon. 

A long finger creeps over the top of the pages and pushes the book back down. Your sandwich turns into a stone in your gut.

"Jess?" he asks again, bent nearly double at the waist so your eyes are on the level.

You shake your head and try to raise your book, but he sends out the rest of his fingers and plucks it from your grasp. 

He flips the book over. " _Created to Be His Help Meet: Discover How God Can Make Your Marriage Glorious_ ," he reads, eyebrows lifting up incredulously and you duck your head as your cheeks heat. You've been mocked for your devotion your whole life, but it never gets easier, never hurts less. You stare at your knees and offer up a little prayer that he'll take the hint and leave.

He sits down across from you instead. "You're Jessica Moore," he says and the utter certainty in his tone is hits your denial reflex—honed by your older brother your entire childhood—like a rubber hammer to the knee.

"No, I'm not."

"Sure: you're Patty Duke," he shoots back, just as quick. "Identical cousins only happen on TV, and you don't have any sisters, so tell me what you're doing here, Jess. You get pulled down last year like Grandpa Campbell?"

"I'm not Jess Anyone, I'm—" you say, and slap your hand over your mouth before you can correct him with your real name.

"Sorry, but you're not fooling me," he says. "Brunette's a good look on you, almost as good as your natural blonde," and his gaze drifts to your lap before looking back up at you with an obscene leer, raising your hackles even before he chuckles out, "but I'd know you anywhere."

Your hand goes to your braid, freshly dyed barely an hour ago and still reeking of chemicals. You shift uneasily under his too frank stare. You aren't used to being looked at like this, like he's so familiar with your body that you may as well be wearing plastic wrap. You don't understand how, because you've never seen him before and you'd remember him for sure—you never forget the ones that are taller than you with heels on. You're ashamed to find you like it a little, being seen, even if you don't care for him at all. 

You lean over to grab your purse to leave, one hand on the table for balance and you almost scream when he grabs it, fingers circling around your wrist to hold you in place.

"Wait," he says. "Just, wait a moment. Let me show you." He lets go of you to pull out his wallet and you're so stunned by his audacity that you obey.

He lays a picture on the table and despite your better instincts, you pick it up for a closer look. It's an old photo booth picture, worn around the edges, but the subjects are still clear. A younger version of the man across from you is flashing killer dimples at the camera with his arm wrapped lovingly around the young blonde woman in his lap.

You stare, unable to process what you're seeing. It doesn't make any sense, because she's you—a little younger, a little slimmer—but you: right down to the mole on your brow.

"Jess," he says again. "You."

You shake your head. "No, no. This can't be me. I don't even know who you are."

"I'm Sam, Sam Christo Winchester, you're Jessica Lee Moore," he says, staring at your eyes down like he expects the names alone to make his memories flash in front of them while everything comes rushing back. He looks almost disappointed when it doesn't. "I was going to marry you, you know." You're shaking your head so hard your neck is starting to hurt. "You really don't remember me?"

"No," you say, but you can't take your eyes off the girl in the picture. It's hard to believe anyone could really be as happy as she appears, smiling and bright. Not even the thought of Elijah fills you with the radiant joy so obvious in this well-worn mirror image. "Tell me about her?" you ask, not knowing you were going to until the words were out in the air and no taking them back. But you don't want to, not really. Because some days it's everything you can do just to get out of bed to care for your son and maybe if you knew this Jess-person, knew about her, you'd know how to feel more like the girl in the picture who looks just like you except she's so happy she glows.

"Please," you ask again. He looks at you like a puzzle to pick apart, but complies.

So you play pretend as Sam tells you about Jess, the smiling, brilliant girl who loved numbers, doing doctoral work in topologyy as an undergrad at Stanford. Athletic, too: a champion surfer and intramural softball pitcher. He talks about them, Sam and Jess, their hilariously awful first date, and the touchingly sweet second. The fits and starts of learning to live together when they got their apartment, cooking disasters, fights, and just watching silly movies on the couch, her cold feet tucked into his side.

It's hard for you to reconcile this cold man in front of you with the Sam from the stories at first, but as he talks he grows a little warmer, softer, like the habit of affection for this woman is so deeply ingrained he can't help but fall into its grooves. You fall a little in love, maybe, with the Sam in the stories, goofy and loving and kind. You want to have that too, that care and love. 

Lulled by the daydream of Jess, you lower your defenses against this Sam, intense and harsh and sharp as a knife, but whose smiles remain undimmed. His stories, his smiles, and his low, earnest voice all draw you in and without really thinking about it, you find yourself reaching out across the table for his hand.

Sam doesn't skip a beat, just turns his hand over so your hands are palm to palm and gently strokes his thumb along the outside of your pinky. The caresses send a shocking thrill through your nerves while somehow feeling every bit as natural as breathing. He finishes this last story—a date on the beach and how you'd taught him and his gangly limbs to balance on a surfboard for almost ten whole seconds before giving up on him as a lost cause—and you sit in silence for a moment, letting the past settle. 

He sighs, back again. "But you never did give up on me, not even—" and he stops himself, looking down. Then he slides his fingers up the inside of your arm and takes your right hand, raises it to his lips, kissing your fingers, and your breath catches in your throat at the sudden wave of heat that washes through your body. 

"I thought I'd lost you forever," he says, then gently sets your right hand over the left one—hiding the rings that mark Perry's claim. But the way Sam looks at you makes you feel unbearably warm even as it sends a shiver down your spine—he may have noticed the rings, but it's obvious he doesn't give a damn. For several long seconds he doesn't touch you or say another word, making it clear that what happens next is up to you. Having a choice, a slice of control, is as heady as his touch, and you wonder if this is what if feels like to be drunk. 

When Sam stands to leave, you grab your purse and hold out your hand for him to take. He lifts you from your seat like a gentleman of old and there is nothing more in the world you want right then except to go where he will lead you. For the first time in longer than you can remember, you feel like an actual person, alive and really here, living the moment instead of floating through it in a haze. 

You're halfway out the door when he snags the book out of your hand and tosses it back on the shop counter. He gets a wicked smile on his face and points up: you look and see the security camera. He holds your hand and gives it a squeeze when you try to cover your face in embarrassment and tilts his head at the clerk--who's reading a magazine and paying no attention to the surveillance monitors. "Don't worry about what people think so much," Sam teases, echoing what he claims had been one of Jess' constant refrains, and for the moment, you don't.

You want this, what Jess had. The joy in her eyes, the love of a man who loved her back. The strength and the smarts and the power to live life instead of being dragged along behind it. To have someone look at you and desire you and respect you, and love you so deeply that your loss breaks someone as profoundly as this man has been broken.

You know that this isn't really that, this game the two of you are playing. But it's as close as you'll ever get to tasting it and the hunger is enough to make you reckless and brave. To hold tight to Sam's hand as he leads you away: two blocks down and three blocks back, all the while talking about the coast and the sun and the girl that you aren't.

The motel is unnerving. Low class and you think there is a hooker smoking at the far end, but Sam doesn't let you balk and momentum carries you forward until you're tucked under his arm as he unlocks the room. In one smooth move he pivots you inside, kicks shut the door, and presses you against the wall.

Sam reaches up slowly, careful not to startle you, and brushes the back of his hand against your face gentle as butterfly wings. Your eyes fall shut and his fingers dance across them.

"Jess," he says and you feel the hiss of air from the s on your lips before he kisses you, slow and gentle. You do your best to follow along, trailing just a bit behind until suddenly you're moving with him instead. Lips and tongues and teeth in some strange dance where no one is the leader and it's completely unlike the chaste kisses with your husband during your courtship or the boys that took you behind the bushes in the park as a girl. You move together, easy as breathing and it's wonderful.

Except nothing about this should be easy. You are going to burn in hellfire, that's what happens to adulteresses. You've spent your whole life dedicating yourself to God's Word and it should be harder to throw yourself into the pit, but you can't bring yourself to care, not when he's touching you like this. It's effortless to just let it go, all the rules and obligations, like nothing else has been in so very long and you just close your eyes and leave yourself in his hands.

Sam wastes no time once he feels you relax and give in. Shoves your skirt and underwear down and your shirt up and off. Unclasps your bra and tugs it off your shoulder, his lips latching onto your breast almost immediately. It's startling how different the suckle of his mouth on your nipple is from your child's, teethful and twisting, full of a different sort of hunger. For the first time in as long as you can remember, you feel tethered to life by more than your obligation to the child at your teet.

He sets you alight, hands finding all the places that make you squirm, mouth blazing a trail of fire on your skin. Blood rushing to edges of you until you are flush and tingling, can feel the boundaries of your skin against the world, more present in your body than for the entirely of your pregnancy and it's aftermath. A pressed flower in a book unfolding, plumping up and blooming again, two dimensions to three, blossoming, awakening from the caged sleep between it's dead pulped brethren. Alive. 

He moves you away from the wall, lays you both onto the motel bed, side by side, just kissing and stroking each other. You end up on top of him eventually, your milk-heavy breasts pressed against his chest and his hard penis jutting up between your legs, gently rubbing up and down through your pubic hair. Sam slides his hands under your knees and pulls you up his body. Lifts until you are sitting over his face, and the way he moves you like you're weightless, some slip of a girl instead of a giant Amazon freak, makes your heart stutter more than the warm lap of his tongue along the edges of your labia.

His tongue jabs inside, a sudden wet pressure that startles a moan out of you. Soft short thrusts, once twice thrice, enough to leave you aching with want. He starts licking you in earnest then, tongue teasing at your opening and working its way up your folds to circle round that horribly, wonderfully sensitive spot. Firm rhythmic long wet strokes over and over again until you are grinding against his face helplessly, needily.

He shoves two fingers into you then, hard, and you keen as he strokes your inner walls. He takes your clit between his lips, sucks and hums, thrusting and pressing inside and the embers that have been building inside you flare up white and hot.

He flips you over onto your back while you're still shuddering through the aftershocks, spreads your legs and slides in. You cry out at the burn. He's big and long, and the first few thrusts feel like you're being rubbed raw and punched inside. You try to twist away from the pain and Sam growls in response, bites your breast hard as he shoves your right leg up against your shoulder so some of his weight is resting on it. You push back against him with it on instinct and it's just enough that his next thrust doesn't hurt as much deep inside, isn't so raw as your body stretches around his girth.

He shifts a little and your next cry is one of surprised pleasure, each grind of his hips against yours sending flares of sensation through your body, and you clutch at him, hungry for more more more. You didn't know it could be like this. Heedless and urgent and perfect. You start to flutter around him again, gasps turning to cries, and he shoves your leg aside and slams into you hard, deep deep deep punching the breath right out of you. You wrap yourself around him, body hungry for all of him, the fullness and the pressure, fanning the flames higher and higher and higher. He loses rhythm then, shoves you up the bed and shouting out for "Jess" as he starts to come wet and hot inside of you.

"Sam," you gasp, hips grinding desperately beneath his weight. "Oh, God, Sam, please." He slams into you with his final thrust and everything goes white hot as you tumble over the edge into the abyss.

++

After, once your heartbeat has stopped its mad racing, you get up from the wreck of the bed, rebraid your too-dark hair to keep it dry, and shower his smell from your skin. Your breasts ache; you've gone too long since you pumped. You need to leave, but you can't quite make yourself break the spell cast by the weight of Sam's stare as he watches you dress from the bed. 

It's only after he gets up and climbs in the shower himself that you manage to get your feet moving out the door. The late afternoon sunlight is blinding after the shadows of the room, like a slap in the face by reality, and the weight of what you did hits you full in the chest. 

You find yourself sprinting down the streets back towards you car, like if you move fast enough what you've done will never catch up to you. Your skirt twists and flaps around your ankles, nearly tripping you with every step, but you just became an adulteress and immodesty is one more sin than you can bear to commit tonight.

It takes you five minutes to stop shaking long enough to unlock your car. Another fifteen before you've calmed down enough that it's safe for you to drive it. But when you finally start the car and slide into traffic, you've cast aside the dream, banished Jess into the deep hole that all your imaginary friends of old fell into one by one through the years. If you'd really been Jess—if that had really been Sam—then he would have followed you here, wouldn't have let himself lose the love of his life again. But he's had plenty of time to follow you and you're all alone, which means you can't be Jess.

You are only Alice again and you have to go home now. There is dinner to cook and your leaking breasts to deal with, and tonight is Elijah's bath night. Your husband and your baby need you, so you turn the key and drive.

++

You make hamburgers once you get home, quick and easy, Perry's favorite. But when you bite into the juicy beef, lean and grass fed from the neighbor, perfectly cooked with just a hint of pink, you smell smoke so strongly that you panic and shout "Fire!" in a spray of barely chewed food, the ketchup streaking like blood against the table cloth.

"There is no fire," Perry says, the slight lift of an eyebrow his only reaction. Your finger joints ache with how badly you want to strangle him and you curl them down into fists. He takes a bite and you hope he chokes on it, just for a moment, until you realize how awful that is and you hope that you're the one who chokes instead. It's no more than you deserve after what you did today. Perry is your husband and it's your duty to love and care for him. Joined in the eyes of God in a sacred covenant that you've defiled. You pray for forgiveness, for Jesus to open your heart, as you get some more napkins to clean up your mess.

++

You dream of Sam that night. At least you think it's him. The breathy grunts of pleasure sound just the same. He's different, though, slim and long and so so gentle with you. He plays your body like a drum, today’s Sam did that too, but there is love and a lingering sweetness as he mouths at your neck, breathing your name, _Jess, Jess, Jess,_ with every slow thrust. You can hear yourself, helplessly gasping as he bottoms out every time, stifling your moans into his shoulder at the ache in your gut and the completely different ache as your hips grind together just right, too much too much and you wake up, back arched off the bed with your hand in your soaked underwear, heel grinding down hard and fingers curled in your warm wet heat.

The closet clicks shut behind you and you freeze, guilty and ashamed. Socks brush against the carpet. It's still dark out and you can see Perry in the reflection from the window, the bathroom light like a miniature sun behind his shoulder. He's watching you as he buttons his shirt and a different sort of heat suffuses your body. You ease your hips down, and slide your fingers out, wipe the slick off on your belly. But you can't stop your legs from squeezing as your back hits the mattress, no more than you can still the helpless little grinding of your hips, the clench and release low in your gut. You're so hollow inside it hurts.

You turn a little, can't quite bite back the gasp as the shift sends a bit of pleasure up through your core. It's a sin, it is. You're still breast feeding, haven't had a period since before your wedding night, but the other wives say their husbands touch them even when they aren't trying, even when they can't get pregnant at all. You ache and you want and maybe, maybe if you'd had this before you wouldn't have let temptation overcome you. 

"Perry," you say, beg really, and God you sound like the harlot you are, but you don't care, you don't.

"Good morning, Alice," he says and puts on his tie. "The baby will be awake soon. You should clean up."

He walks out. The front door shutting a few minutes later wakes up the baby, little mewls on the monitor, so you wipe away your tears and get up to wash your hands.

You walk through the hall, your body mostly settled now, and the sun is just rising through the picture window in the living room, a sharp beam of light over calm ocean of fields, only suddenly there is the ocean, anything but calm, waves crashing into the dark beach, fire tipped walls of blackness, and you are just breathing in the salt spray and morning smell.

You are on your knees. There is no ocean, no beach, only your house and your carpet and you really should vacuum. Then Elijah starts wailing, his hungry cry. Your breasts ache, full and heavy, ready to feed, so you get up and go because there isn't anything else to do. You don't know what's wrong with you or what these episodes mean. You don't understand why you can't be good and satisfied like you should, but it's doesn't really matter. The baby's crying and you may not be able to do anything else right, you can do this. You have to.

++

_August 24, 2011_

"Do you know who the father is?" Perry asks after they finish saying grace. 

You're reaching for your water and you fumble the glass, darkness spreading across the table cloth unchecked as you gape at your husband. "Excuse me?" 

"Do you know who the father is?" he says again after swallowing a bite of potato. Yours are floating in a pool in your plate.

"I don't understand," you say, but a part of you does, oh yes, there is a puddle on the table to prove it.

"You do," he says. 

Very carefully you put down your silverware. You don't trust your hands right now and you rest them on your belly, still soft from your pregnancy with Elijah, for safekeeping..

"Yes," you say eventually, hardly a wobble at all to your voice. "Yes, I know who the father is. But he was just passing through. It wasn't—"

Perry waves a hand to cut you off. "I was simply curious. A sibling for Elijah may be for the best, even if it is a bastard. It doesn't seem to have interfered with your nursing, so I don't see much of a problem if the father won't come sniffing around."

"He won't." It takes all of your self control to speak loud enough for Perry to hear you.

"You should clean up your mess before the water harms the wood." Perry says and takes a bite of peas. 

You don't quite run for the kitchen, but it's a near thing. And if it takes you ten minutes to find a towel, your eyes are dry when you walk back into the dining room.

++

Things carry on at home much as they had before, the only thing changing is the size of your waistline and Elijah becoming a magnet for trouble the moment he learns how to walk. 

You keep having episodes, flashes of things you never did and people you've never met. You get better at hiding them, at dealing with the dislocation, but the don't stop coming. You should probably more worried then you are, but in some ways you welcome them, these little moments of escape.

It hurts more than you thought it would that nothing changed between you and your husband once he discovered your affair. It's perverse, but you're angry that he isn't angry. You feel betrayed that he doesn't seem affected by your betrayal at all. You didn't realize you meant so little to him. But in some ways it makes it easier too. You know now that your marriage is little more than a mutually beneficial and cordial exchange of services and can adjust your expectations down accordingly. 

Still, his disregard hurts, almost as much as the shattered dream of what your life and marriage and family was supposed to be like, but you think you'll get over it eventually. Elijah loves you plenty and you can't help but love him back, and you're looking forward to falling in love with the one growing inside of you, too. It's not what you hoped for, but it's enough. And even if it really isn't yet, then you'll make it be enough.

++

_March 21, 2012_

"Jess?" a man calls out from behind you, half-whispered and wondering.

You're in the Walmart parking lot, a few people packing up in hearing distance. He's probably not talking to you, but you're already turning, so quick the blonde end of your pony tail slaps you in the face. The baby's weight keeps pulling you around and you stumble back awkwardly before finding your balance again, 

You hear the same voice say _Oh, I love the Smurfs_ , but he's gape jawed with shock, bird could fly right on in. An episode you realize, and you feel like he looks because you've never had one that bore any connection to the real world before except for the few that deal with Sam. The vertigo arrives then, right on cue, and you ride it out, watching as he drags his mouth closed, this stranger you do and do not know. 

He's handsome without the fool's gawp, the setting sun lighting his features beautifully, but then his face twists into something ugly, angry. Maybe you knew him once, in the other life you're half-convinced you really may have lived, but you're dead certain that you don't want to know him now. If this is a test from God, it's an easy one, and you turn back towards the store. Karen only agreed to watch Elijah for a few hour to give you one last chance to run errands toddler free before the baby is born and you intend to take advantage.

A hand closes hard around your arm, jerks you around. You grunt as your stomach smacks hard into his side, the baby shifting to bump your diaphragm and you lose your one opportunity to scream for help trying to force your lungs to inhale properly. By the time you get your breath back, he's pulled a gun out and presses it into your side.

"Make one goddamn sound and I'll shoot you, don't think that I won't," he hisses in your ear. You choke back your panicked impulse to beg for mercy. Wet warmth dribbles down one thigh as your bladder lets go, too much for the panty liner, and the sharp odor of urine fills the air. 

"Come on," he says, glancing around to check for witnesses as he drags you deeper into the parking lot to an old black car. 

"Get in." Your hands are shaking too much to open the door so he reaches around and does it for you. Practically shoves you in before slamming it shut, catching part of your skirt. 

He slides in the other side and the ease with which he keeps the gun trained on you as he starts the car and maneuvers it out of the parking lot makes you think he's done this before. You clap one hand over your mouth as the terror worms its way out of you in hiccupping whimpers, the other slipping down over your baby, as if the bones of your hand can stop a bullet. You don't want to die, not yet, not like this, so you try to obey and make no sounds. No one would hear you scream in the car anyway.

A few minutes later he pulls into a motel on the outskirts of town, a neglected holdover from the fifties surrounded by scrub and highway, and the black car in the rutted parking lot makes two. There is no rescue here.

"Get out," he says. You fumble a little with the handle, but manage this time. The heavy door swings open with a creak soon echoed as he climbs out as well. He grabs your arm again and drags you to the room farthest away from the motel office. He doesn't bother with a key, just opens the door.. 

"Dean?" someone shouts from inside, another man. He too sounds familiar but you are done with familiar, want nothing to do with it. And yet, when Dean yanks you inside and kicks shut the door, you can't bite back the hopeful "Sam?" that bubbles up when he comes out of the bathroom. He's unmistakable and Perry is going to kill you if the two of them don't.

Sam stares at you, shocked. "Jess," he says after a moment. "Jess, it it really?" He trails off, and his face twists with anger as he looks past stunned recognition to really see you: the tears and terror and the obscene bulge of your baby belly. "What the fuck did you do to her, Dean? Are you insane?" 

Sam takes a step forward, then drops like a stone, hitting the floor with a loud thud. Long body a heap of limbs that shake and shake and shake

"Sam!" Dean shouts, crossing the room in three long steps and then hovering uselessly. 

You stand there staring like an idiot before you realize this is your chance. Quiet and with agonizing slowness, you sneak out the door. As soon as you see daylight, you head for the motel office as fast as you can with the baby in your pelvis, more of a swayback jog than a run and even that is excruciating. Hands grab you before you're halfway there and you scream. Dig your heels in and fight back, twisting and grabbing and scratching. But he's stronger than you, a little taller even, and you can't curb your instincts to protect your belly, can't find your balance because you haven't really had it for months now. You try though, too deep in your panic not to, but there's a certain inevitability to the slam of the motel room door and the burn of the carpet on your knees when he drops you on the floor.

Sam is sitting up now, propped up against the bed and you try to go to him, your last hope. 

"Please. Oh Jesus, please don't kill me," you beg, half-crawling, half-sliding across the floor because your skirt is in the way. "Don't kill our baby, Sam. It's yours, I swear it is. Please don't kill our baby. I'll do anything you want. Anything."

You can hardly see your crying so hard, but the line of denim blue across the brown carpet is close now and you reach out a trembling hand, aiming high for his groin so they don't mistake your meaning. You're no martyr, no saint, and you've already made yourself a harlot and adulteress. You just want to live, want your baby to live, want to hold Elijah again. Lord Jesus please, you'll give anything just for that.

"Don't you motherfucking touch him," Dean says and slaps your hand away.

"Dean!" Sam reaches out instead and his hand is clammy as it covers yours. "Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with you?" 

"What's wrong with you, Sam?" Dean shouts right back. "It's not Jess. You know damn well it's not and there ain't no way in Hell that's your kid. Jess is dead, and this thing, whatever it is, it's not her."

"You're wrong," Sam says, and his thumb runs over the bones in your wrist in a motion that's probably meant to be soothing but isn't. "It is Jess. It's really her. I know—"

"How do you know, Sam, huh?" Dean says, boots scuffing across the carpet as he begins to pace. "She isn't the first that's been brought back to fuck with us, not by a long shot, and I am so fucking sick of it." Something slams hard against the table, and you bite back a whimper; it's all too easy imagining him hitting you instead, adding more bruises to the one's he's already left.

Something unzips and there is a moment of rummaging, heavy things clanking together. Then Sam says "Jesus, put the knife away" and you can't hold back a wail, curling tighter around your baby.

"Sam--"

"Goddamnit, Dean, will you just listen?" 

You flinch back from Sam's frustrated shout and he lifts his hand from you like he's been burned. "Sorry," he says sadly, "I didn't mean to...shit."

He levers himself up onto the bed to give you some spave with a sigh. "Look, I know because I met her when you and Lisa were moving house, I think? I remembered when I saw her, that's what triggered the... thing."

"The fucking Hell seizure, you mean?" 

You can hear Dean moving and you peek nervously through your hair but all he does is sit.

"So you saw Jess, your _dead girlfriend_ , and you didn't tell me?" Dean's still angry, you can hear it, but it's a tired sort of anger, no longer aimed at you. The fear eases back, just a little, enough to start getting your breathing under control. 

"I...I don't know why I didn't tell you. I don't remember after," Sam says. "But I didn't feel it was.. important at the time, not when she passed all the tests. She thought she was someone else. I... it was just something to pass the time. A weird thing, sure, but harmless. Fun." 

"Fun." Dean repeats, incredulous. "You fucked her. Of course you did."

He unscrews a flask and takes a drink. "So the baby, do you think it really is...?"

"Christ." Sam runs his hands through his hair. "Yeah, it could be, the timing fits."

"And she really doesn't know who she is?" Dean remembers you're there then: "You don't know who you are?"

You shake your head mutely, you aren't Jess which is what he's really asking. At least, you're fairly certain you aren't—between Sam and the episodes and now Dean, you really don't know anything for sure. 

"Well, okay then." Dean takes another drink. "I'm thinking this is way above our pay grade, so. Castiel, get your ass down here right now because we've got some really fucked up shit going down. Amen."

A sigh of feathers, a puff of air, and suddenly there is a man in a trenchcoat in the middle of the room, shoes inches for your face. You scream and scramble back, try to anyways but the bed's in the way and you end up on your butt in a tangle of limbs and fabric.

"Hey! Hey, hey, hey," Sam says, hand reaching towards her. "It's all right. Really. He's an angel, he won't hurt you."

A harsh bark of laughter falls out of your gaping mouth and more tumble after: the dam has broken and here comes the deluge. You aren't even sure if you're laughing or crying really, but very idea that an angel of the Lord would associate with these monsters is so horrifyingly ludicrous that the only explanation is you've gone insane at last. It's almost a relief after all these months, and that just gets you laughing all the harder. 

You can hear them talking but everything is spinning. Black spots dance along the edges of your vision. A hand reaches through the darkening tunnel, pale like a strange moon. You try to move away but your body stopped listening a while ago, and the cool fingers press against your forehead.

You burn.

++

Someone's hands slide under your arms and knees, swing you up into the air. It's like a roller coaster and Jess loves them and Alice hates them and the mental dissonance is making you queasy. Being set on the bed doesn't help though, instead of swinging through space, you're looping through lives.

You are Jess and your parents are alive and you were ready to say yes when Sam was ready to pop the question. But this Sam isn't your Sam and the year is all wrong and your life is all wrong. You never married, never slept with the man you call husband, or dated him. You have no siblings and the only reason you read the Bible was for a religious studies class for your gen ed requirements. Your family never burned. 

You did. 

An impossible conflagration, pinned to the ceiling, gutted and voiceless. Sam laying down underneath you, and when he opens his eyes and finally sees you, there is no surprise, no disbelief. Only recognition and the deep horror of knowing. You want to ask him, but you never get the chance. A blossom of light and heat and pain and you should be dead dead dead.

Pain slices across your abdomen and you scream, not quite sure you haven't been thrown back into that moment, aren't on the ceiling waiting for the fire. It's all consuming, a hot band of agony around your gut, everything dimming and fading because Brady sliced you through and through.

A hot puff of air blows across your eyelashes and you gasp, cold air rushing in to fill the void in your chest. You open your eyes. 

"Breathe, Jess," Sam says, so close his face is a blur in the corner of your eye. "You've gotta breathe."

You aren't on the ceiling, so you do your best, short shallow gasps until it suddenly eases off and you manage to uncurl from your tightly clenched fetal position.

The baby shifts beneath your palms and you didn't think you had any more terror in you, but you do, oh God, you do. "Something's wrong, Sam, something's wrong with the baby." 

"Cas?" Sam says, and the weird guy in the trenchcoat--you're doing your damndest to forget about the angel comment because you can't deal with that right now, can not--comes closer until he's right in front of you and reached a hand towards you.

You flinch back into Sam's bulk because the last time this guy touched you, you burned alive. But Sam just wraps one of his monkey arms around you so you can't move. "It's okay, Jess. Really. He can help, just let him."

"I will not harm you, Jessica Moore," Cas says, probably trying to be reassuring but mostly just confirming the weird label. He doesn't wait for your permission, just lays his hand on your belly and closes his eyes.

A moment later he opens them and steps back out of your space. "You are in labor, Jessica, no doubt brought on by the stress of today's events. The child is well and viable, however, and stopping it would likely do both of you harm."

"Shit," Dean says from across the room, and you had actually managed to forget he was here, the asshole. He looks a little pale and you hope he faints like a pussy, you really really do.

"It doesn't feel right, though," you say, shaking your head, because you just did this eighteen months ago, just you and Perry and it was _nothing_ like what you just felt, even at the end.

"Your body is reacting to the trauma. I expect that will increase the intensity of the labor."

"Are you sure? Last time wasn't like that at all."

"Last time?" Sam asks.

"Alice had...I had a baby boy eighteen months ago. Elijah," you answer, letting yourself collapse back into Sam's solid bulk. You're exhausted and your head hurts and you can't seem to stop trembling. If this really is labor, you're not sure you have the strength to get through it. 

Another contraction hits, sharp and hard, stomach and back and hips and thighs. You cry out and try to breathe through it like Sam says, and then someone touches your ankle and the pain just stops. You gasp and open your eyes, belly still rock hard, but it doesn't hurt at all. Just, pressure and tightness and you force yourself to relax into it and work with your body.

Cas lifts his hand away and you brace yourself for the pain to come back, but it doesn't. "What did you do?" you ask once you get your breath back. 

"Temporarily blocked the pain receptors in your brain. You have already suffered enough today."

"Thank you" seems inadequate, but you're too tired to come up with anything better in the face of the impossible.

"You're welcome," he says. "This will also facilitate your interrogation. Though some people keep forgetting, I'm in the middle of fighting a war right now and do not have a great deal of time."

"You're fighting in Afghanistan?" you ask; it's the only active war you can think of right now.

"No, Heaven."

"Heaven. Right." You put that in the deal with it later box, which is getting fuller than you'd like. "Look, I'll answer your questions, but I don't think I'll be much help until someone tells me what is going on. I'm pretty sure I should be dead?" You feel Sam flinch behind you, and you squeeze his hand, all the comfort you can spare right now.

"All I require is the location of your husband, Perry. I believe he is the angel responsible for your unique circumstances and I need to know why Raphael saved you."

The memories shift in your head at the mention of Perry's name and you say "He's not my husband" even as you realize that he isn't. Thank fuck for that too, because Perry is an asshole and you'd hope that any version of you would have better standards than that.

"What?" 

"Not in the biblical sense, not in any sense," you say, and the deeper you dig the more the foundation of Alice's life crumbles away. "The wedding and the wedding night never happened. I wasn't...reborn, I guess, until after."

Another contraction hits, painless still, but a sharp reminder that you have more important things to worry about than a nonexistent marriage. "Oh, God, Elijah! We need to get him away from that psycho." You sit up and scoot off the bed and tug at Sam's arm to try to get him moving. "Sam, you have to go get him right now. Is it eight, yet? Perry's supposed to pick him up from--"

"Enough!" Cas says sharply, a vocal slap that cuts off your panicky babble. "I don't have time for this, none of us do."

You open your mouth, prepared to tell the room that they better fucking find the time to save her son then, but the next sentence out of his mouth kills the words in yours. 

"There's only ten minutes left before eight o'clock." The strength goes out of your knees and you sink back down onto the bed. 

He look at you, somehow softening a little even though his expression doesn't change.. "I can retrieve your son in time, Jessica. I just need you to answer one question first. Who is Elijah's father?"

"Seriously?" More and more you feel like you've been cast in some sort of awful soap opera. "Why is that important right now?"

"Because I need to know how hard the one you call Perry will fight to keep him."

"Oh." You close your eyes and try to bring some order to the mess in your aching head. "If we're ruling out immaculate conception," you say after a moment, because at this point it doesn't seem that far fetched.

"We are," Cas says firmly.

"Then he's Sam's." You peek at Sam over your shoulder and he looks like he's about ready to pass out. "Look, unless the way babies are made has changed while I was dead, Elijah is Sam's son. He has to be. He's the only one I've slept with in, well, since three years before I died and the only one since...not being dead."

"Thank you," Cas says. "Now think of where you son is." He brushes a finger across your forehead and disappears.

"Holy shit."

"Yeah, you never really get used to that," Dean says. "He'll get Elijah though, lickity split." A part of you appreciates the reassurance, but you're still terrified of him and angry and it's easier just to turn away.

It's the longest minute and a half of your life before Cas reappears again, your little boy asleep in his arms.

You reach out for him, but at that moment your water decides to break, a warm wet gush down your thighs, across the bed and dripping onto the floor. 

"Fuck." You lower your arms and Castiel lays your boy down on the other bed.

"You okay, Jess?" Sam asks, and rubs your back. 

"Not particularly, but I'll survive," you say, suddenly exhausted. You awkwardly scoot back and lean against him again.

"There is still the matter of this so called Perry to deal with," Cas says after a moment. "He will discover Elijah's absence shortly and an angel's wrath is nothing to trifle with."

"Perry? An angel?" you ask incredulously, because you can't imagine anyone less angelic, 

"Your memories were tampered with by an angel and he is the most logical suspect. Father is an ideal role when you are charged with guarding a child."

"But why?" you ask, and it's nice to finally be able to get to the heart of the matter. "I mean, what's so special about Elijah that they had to bring me back from the dead to have him?"

You can see Cas is going to shrug you off again, but both Sam and Dean speak up, backing you up and wanting to know as well, and he gives in with a sigh. 

"They wanted to preserve the bloodline." Castiel answers, clearly annoyed but you don't care because all you want right now is to understand. "They thought Sam was dead, and the child you carried when you died was the last of the line. It's Raphael's long game. They managed to break the enough seals once already, and now with the war, it would be childs play to do it again. But there wouldn't be much point if there is no suitable vessel."

"What--"

"Don't ask, Jess," Dean says. "You don't want to know right now, trust me on that. We'll tell you later, I promise. But let's leave it at they wanted to make sure the Winchester genes kept on keeping on."

"He's right, Jess." Sam says and rubs your shoulder. "We'll tell you everything, but now is not the time."

"Fine," you say because it isn't the battle you want to fight right now anyways. "But I'm still not telling you where Perry is. If he was the one who did this to me and you are going to fuck his shit up, then you better damn believe I am going to be there when that happens. I want answers, I deserve answers. The first stone is mine to cast by right." You clap your hand over your mouth after the last because that wasn't you, that was Alice peeking up through the pile of denial you've been trying to bury her under most of the night.

He looks at you for a moment, head tilted like a bird, considering. "You do have a claim, but I do not have time to wait until you are delivered."

"Then make it go faster," you say, completely exasperated. "You're an angel, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am an angel." He stares at her, assessing. "I can do what you ask, but it is not without risk." 

"Will it kill me or the baby?"

"That is a possible but unlikely scenario," he says after a long moment of consideration. "One I will do my utmost to prevent. But it will very nearly deplete your body's resources and the resulting exhaustion will be severe. You will be unable to rise from your bed for days, and your energy will be slow to return."

"I'm about to have a baby, I'm going to be a zombie for months no matter what happens." You're probably being too dismissive, but more than anything you want this done and fuck the consequences. You can live with some bedrest. Hell, you fucking deserve it, after all this. "And Perry?" you ask, because there's no point if you don't get this. "Can you keep me standing for that?" 

"Yes," he says, certain.

"Then let's do this," you say, trying to sound more confident than you feel. Sam squeezes your hand and you squeeze back. He's the only familiar person here—not the same as the Sam you knew, but right now you're just grateful you're not completely surrounded by strangers.

Cas takes off his trench coat, lays is carefully across a chair, and then steps forward, hands outstretched. He touches your stomach and lightning shoots through your veins. There's no pain, not really, but your body is winding tighter and tighter and tighter, you can barely breathe except in shallow pants like a dog tied out in the summer heat. On and on and on, a never ending contraction of your whole body. If you could, you'd scream. You'd tell him to stop because you can feel your bones bending under the strain and they're going to break, you're going to break and it just keeps going and going and going. 

Release. 

You fall back limply into Sam, gasping. You can hear people talking around you but it's too much effort to understand. Pressure is building deep in your pelvis, urgent. You can't move, can't do more than pant weakly. 

Hands rearrange your body until you are mostly on your back, shoulders and head resting against Sam's stomach with his hands under your knees, holding your legs open.

Cas looms over you. "Push now, Jessica."

"Can't," you wheeze. You can't even lift your head, let alone push. For the second time that day you know you and your baby are going to die and this time it will be no one's fault but your own.

"You can," Cas says, so calm that your terror abates a little. "I'll help."

He touches you again and the lightning returns. "Fuck," you gasp as your uterus contracts and strength rushes back into your body in a wave. You give into instinct and push push push. It lets up long enough for you to get a few good breaths and then back to pushing, once, twice, thrice until the baby crowns. Four more rounds and Castiel is lifting your baby up onto your disgustingly squishy stomach. 

"It's a girl," Sam says, voice full of wonder. 

You pull her up and wrap an arm around her warm wet body. "Hey baby girl, hey," you coo and rub a hand along her back to encourage her to cry. A few moment's later she does, a choked gurgle giving way to an angry wail and the whole room breathes a sigh of relief.

"We need to cut the umbilical cord," Cas says after a moment. "The afterbirth still needs to be delivered."

He's got a ridiculously oversized knife in his hand and you don't want it near your baby girl, but he's gotten you this far so you turn her a bit to give him better access.

"Wait, Cas," Dean says from his station across the room. "Let Sam do it."

You tilt your head back to look at Sam and even from the odd angle, you can see the awe and adoration in his face. "Yes, Cas. Let Sam."

Cas flips the knife so he is holding the blade and Sam grabs the hilt firmly. "Don't we need to tie it off first?" he asks.

"I have already sealed off the vessels internally. You should cut here," he says and points before grabbing the cord and holding it taut. . 

You can feel Sam shrug before reaching over and smoothly severing the cord from the bottom up just where Cas indicated. Dean passes a flannel shirt over to Sam and together you start wiping down the baby.

"You should take the child now, Sam," Cas says, and as soon as he lifts the baby off your chest, the contractions start up again. It doesn't take long, two quick pushes and the afterbirth slides out. You're so happy it's over that you start crying again and you don't even care. 

"Sit up a little, Jess," Sam says, so you scoot up until you're leaning back against him properly, just like you used to. He's broader and more muscular now, finally come full into his growth, but he's still Sam, and you were going to marry him once. When he places your little girl back in your arms and cradles you both, you can't be bothered to give a damn.

There are some long ass talks in your future, but you'll both work it out one way or another. You don't have a choice: the two of you have kids now, obligations bigger than the love that sparked between the two crazy college kids you used to be. There's still Perry to deal with and the mess he made of your head with Alice. Also angels are real and you died but didn't and you have a feeling that is just the tip of the iceberg.

But right now you have Sam at your back, your baby in your arms, and your son sleeping safely within reach. You're alive and you're you and you aren't alone. For now, those are miracles enough.


End file.
